This invention is in the field of slicers for meat and other foods, such slicers having downwardly opening outlet housings tapered around their outer sides so as to be larger at their lower ends.
Heretofore it has been a problem that small portions of cheese, cabbage, green peppers, carrots, other vegetables and meat tend to fall out of the outlet sufficiently haphazardly that they tend to fall on the floor, causing waste.
Most restaurants do not have a container on hand which is sufficiently large to catch the materials from the outlet in order to prevent this waste.
A container of considerable size would be needed because a container which is quite small and held up very close in order to compensate for its smallness would be so close that it would be necessary for an operator to be reaching into the food continually to redistribute the position of the food so that it does not concentrate in one place and clog up the outlet that this would be an unsanitary amount of food handling.
In my experience with various restaurants, as a practical matter, excessive food is wasted through falling on the floor.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide an extension for the outlet which can be easily and quickly put in place around the outlet and which can be either removed for cleaning, or, more practically, removed for replacement, since it can be made of relatively inexpensive material.
It would be possible, of course, for the manufactures to make the outlet housings longer, but they do not do so, probably because of cost. So the problem is a very real one.
The problem is acute because food prices are high and there are hundreds of thousands of these slicers on the market, creating very unsanitary conditions because of the mass they make on the floor.